“We've got a lot of work to do,” Nash told reporters after the loss. “We're running out of time here. We can't necessarily hit the panic button, but there needs to be a better sense of urgency.”

Because of injuries, the team, as constructed in the offseason, hasn’t played much together. And while Nash—who has played in only seven games this season—is counseling patience, he says the process has to speed up.

“It's confounding,” Nash said. “It's frustrating. We're in a tough position. We really have a lot of ground to make up. We're not finding a lot of answers right now, and we're struggling a little bit."

The Lakers are 9½ games behind the first-place Los Angeles Clippers in the Pacific Division and yet only 1½ games out of eighth place, the cutoff for the playoffs, in the Western Conference with months to go in the regular season.

The team’s play has raised a question, according to the Times: Do the Lakers have the pieces they need to win, once given enough collective experience, or are they just a .500 team, despite all the expectations?

Nash says a lack of cohesion is natural, given the lack of reps.

“There's just so little commonality. There's so few common experiences between us, so many situations just seem new,” he said. “I think we're struggling to find that little bit of connectivity that makes a team a team.

“We need common experiences. So far we just look like, I think, a bunch of guys who are trying to learn each other. We don't have that understanding yet.”

The tricky part for general manager Mitch Kupchak, the Times notes, is figuring out whether a roster change would be beneficial. Roster additions—or subtractions—may be needed for the team to blossom, but they also might cause additional painful adjustments.